Dame Beatrice cackled, but there was no mirth in the sound.
‘You must do better than that,’ she said. ‘You were given the pictures in exchange for holding your tongue on behalf of Rattock about the theft of the money for the tour to Greece, I think.’
‘I insisted on the cheques being sent to the bank. I made that a condition of my silence.’
‘Because you and that Buxton nephew thought the cheques might be too hot to handle, I suppose,’ said Laura. Pybus covered his face, a purely histrionic gesture which deceived neither of the women. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up. Laura stood up, too, and, with a powerful arm, thrust him back and bluntly told him to remain seated. Before this impressive display of women’s lib, Pybus capitulated.
‘All right, all right,’ he said. Laura resumed her own seat and took paper and ballpoint from her handbag.
‘Just rough notes, but we’ll get you to sign them,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘I won’t!’
Dame Beatrice leered at him and he flinched.
‘If I am to persuade the police not to bring a capital charge against you, I think you will,’ she said.
‘That’s blackmail!’
‘Yes, of course it is. How clever of you to know the word for it,’ said Laura. ‘It was also blackmail when you demanded the Pythias paintings in return for keeping silent about the stolen money and, of course, about the murder.’
‘He came in here at half-past eight this morning,’ said the Detective-Superintendent, ‘and gave himself up. Swears he knew nothing about the murder at the time. Just believed the story he had been told, that Pythias had gone away for Christmas, leaving the tour money locked up in his room. I don’t think, now I’ve talked to him, that he is cut out for villainy. Perhaps you would like to have a word with Routh. I believe he is expecting you.’
Routh exuded a certain amount of satisfaction when they met. He said he was receiving kudos for the way he had conducted his share of the case. The Super, he added, had been very decent and had had him in while Pybus made his confession. ‘How much of it is true may or may not come out at his trial,’ Routh went on. ‘We shall hold him on a charge of receiving goods knowing them to have been stolen. We’ve also pulled in Rattock who, of course, is full of injured innocence and denies all of the tale told us by Pybus, but Buxton and his missus, not to mention the furniture van, are also involved, so we’ve bagged the whole lot of them and will get them sorted out later. We think Buxton was only involved in getting the body to the school quad, although he absolutely denies this and says all he did was to post an envelope for Rattock in Springdale.
‘I am inclined to believe him,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘I don’t think there is any doubt the body was carried in his van, ma’am, and buried while those chickens were being rounded up.’
‘Yes, but we know that the van was often left in the Buxton’s drive. Rattock, no doubt, knows how to drive it and although he must have had some help with the burial, I have little doubt that Pybus rendered it. Rattock, of course, has denied and will continue to deny the charge of murder and will insist that Pybus named him only to save his own skin. In any case, with so many male tenants at Mrs Buxton’s house, you can scarcely substantiate a murder charge against anybody in particular, I suppose,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘All Hatton Garden to a bit of costume jewellery it was Rattock’s crime, ma’am, but, as you say, we do need final proof of that and I fancy there is very little chance of having him follow Pybus’s example and sign a confession. When we questioned him he rambled a bit and contradicted himself once or twice, but I put that down to nerves. There’s no doubt he is a very frightened man. What he came out with amounts to this: it’s quite true that he was a boy in Pybus’s art class at the old school before this one was built. Pybus was always on the lookout for talent and took an interest in Rattock, thinking the boy had got a bit of a feel for painting and for colour, so he kept in touch with him after the lad left school. Rattock was the only one of Mrs Buxton’s tenants who was ever allowed to have visitors, but, according to Pybus, his own visits to Rattock were not very frequent. However, now and again he ran into Pythias at Mrs Buxton’s — and on one occasion Pythias went up to Rattock’s attic when Pybus was there and took a big portfolio of paintings with him.’
‘So at some time or other, Pybus became aware that Pythias had a talent far superior to his own.’
‘That’s about the size of it, ma’am. Well, to go back to what Pybus has told us, it so happened that on that breaking-up Friday before Christmas, Pybus paid a rather late visit to Rattock and spotted Pythias’s briefcase in Rattock’s room. Rattock told him that Pythias had had a bit of a turn-up with Mrs Buxton and had taken himself off to a friend’s house, leaving the money in Rattock’s charge as he had been unable to bank it in the dinner-hour.’
‘And Pybus swallowed this unlikely story?’
‘According to what he told us, he swallowed it hook, line and sinker, ma’am, and he swears that, until Pythias didn’t turn up at school and didn’t send in a medical certificate at the beginning of the Easter term, he had no suspicions of Rattock at all. After a bit, when still nothing had been heard of Pythias, he went to Mrs Buxton’s house and asked Rattock a few questions about Rattock’s story of being left in charge of the money. Rattock then told him that he was going to keep it, as he reckoned that Pythias was in some sort of trouble and had done a bunk. Pybus says he argued with him and that in the end Rattock agreed to return the cash to the school, but sent only the cheques to the bank and hung on to the actual money.’
‘He appears to have embroidered his story a little since he told it to me. Did you ask him anything about the picture of Vesuvius which was on exhibition in the art room?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Yes, I did mention it. Pybus admitted that it had not been sent in specially for the opening-day exhibition, but that Rattock had given it to him and he had had it for some time. When he was planning this opening-day display, he thought it might prove attractive and eye-catching to what he called “the ignorant laity”. He also said he had not told Rattock that he was putting it on show simply because it had not occurred to him to do so.’
‘Did you query that explanation?’
‘No, ma’am. I thought it was probably true, and it didn’t matter much, anyway.’
‘I agree that it was true, but I also think that the fact he displayed the painting will prove to be Rattock’s Achilles heel.’
‘Could you explain that, ma’am? I realise that anybody who had seen the picture in the art room and the wall painting in Pythias’s bedsit would have no doubt that the same person painted both, but I don’t see how either picture could tell us anything about the murder. I wish you would tell me what you think happened on that Friday
